


Fools Forever

by theherocomplex



Series: Love From a Gurney [4]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-Game(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 07:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19268275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/pseuds/theherocomplex
Summary: ...I don’t merely welcome disaster, I send an engraved invitation and leave my front door unlocked.





	Fools Forever

**Author's Note:**

> From a Tumblr prompt from [bettydice](http://bettydice.tumblr.com): “I thought things were going great” for Salome/Julian.

On more than one occasion — with varying degrees of amusement and kindness — it’s been pointed out to me that I don’t merely welcome disaster, I send an engraved invitation and leave my front door unlocked.

None who has ever said this has ever been  _wrong._ For ages, the most charitable thing that could be said about me was that I was never  _boring_. I was, to one degree or another, a wastrel, a rake, a raconteur, a gadfly; Asra once called me  _exasperation given flesh_ , which for us passed for pillow talk.

But I have tried, with every muscle and nerve in this body of mine, to be better. Of course, that meant asking myself who I was, and who I wanted to be, once all the anecdotes — and yes, they are all almost nearly completely true — and self-sacrifice and self-inflicted misery were peeled away.

A terrifying question, possibly the  _most_  terrifying, even discounting when Lucio asked me if I wanted to see a magic trick, and then fed me a plague beetle. Who was I, really?

As it turned out, I was someone I more or less liked, under all the layers of obfuscation and misdirection and black leather. After all, I had turned out to be someone brave, and funny, and loyal, if rash and prone to pessimism. I had enough to work with, even if the work took me a lifetime.

So here I was, five years later, in a city I helped save, alive and mostly sane and sensible — you couldn’t be  _too_  sane or sensible and still expect to have any fun in life. I was a doctor, I was a brother, and I was a friend, and I daresay I did quite well at all those things.

I was also a lover, and I was  _excellent_  at that.

Not simply in the way you’re thinking, though I flatter myself I am  _well_  above average, in every little carnal regard. But how could I  _not_  be, how could I  _not_  love, with every fiber of my disastrous being, when the object of my affections is such an inspiration?

Salome,  _Salome_ ; her name rolls off my tongue like silk, even after all this time. We’ve traveled half the world together, it seems, and we have never once been bored.

She holds, after all, the same views of sanity and sense that I do. A match made in heaven, and I should count my blessings. I do, every day I do, starting when I wake up to her sleeping face and only ending when I at last give in to sleep.

But — there is one more thing I want to be, more than almost anything: a husband, and I can’t seem to find a way to make it work.

Not for lack of trying; I’d thought of a thousand ways to propose if I’d thought of a single one, and yet none of them have ever been put into action. Every time I tried — ring in hand, knee about to bend — a sick wave of doubt choked me and I changed the subject, or left the room, and the question remained unasked.

You’d think, after confessing my love in chains, in front of the Devil himself, a proposal would be nothing at all. You’d be utterly wrong.

It wasn’t that I doubted Salome. She loves me, more than a human — especially me — deserves to be loved, but — in five years, she’d never once spoken of marriage. Never sighed over vows or dresses or cakes, never cast longing looks at wedding processions through the square. I thought at first she simply had no interest in marriage at all, like our dear Countess, but the doubt squeezed in through one last crack, and I began to ask myself —

What if she simply didn’t want to be married to  _me?_

Imagine my disappointment when I realized my old doubts and love for disaster had gone nowhere at all. Imagine my  _fury_ , at how I doubted the woman who had risked everything to save the city — to save me, time and again. And imagine how I couldn’t even think of asking her to marry me, when I couldn’t believe myself that she would want me.

It’s been a fun few years in this head of mine, I’ll tell you that.

But things, on the surface, are marvelous. At last I’d bought the sloop, after saving every dear little penny I could, and now we floated on a calm sea just outside the harbor, slowly crisping in the sun and eating the dried spiced mango slices my Salome adores. The wind was calm, the sun fierce, and when I closed my eyes, I imagined the world was just the two of us, and the salt breeze all around.

Salome was telling me a story. About Muriel, as a matter of fact, which shouldn’t have been nearly as funny as she made it, because the man has never once cracked so much as a smile in my presence and would probably, if prompted, rip me in half. But my darling Salome has a flair for comedy, among her hundreds of other talents, and somehow a story about Muriel being trapped in his hovel for two days because a broody hen had set up her nest on his doorstep and screeched whenever he tried to pass her was the most hilarious thing I’d ever heard.

I leaned into her shoulder, laughing so hard my eyes are watering, relishing the way her own laughter echoes in my body. This was what I never dreamed about, all those years of running: a simple peace, and sunlight, and love.

And when she brushed hair out of my face and offered me another piece of fruit, I was so overwhelmed by her smile and her eyes and her  _freckles_  I couldn’t help saying, “Will you please just marry me?”

In the interests of full disclosure, I may have almost yelled it. In a begging, pleading-for-my-life sort of way.

Salome stared at me, slack-jawed, and wide-eyed. I stared back, ready to try to laugh it off or conjure a boat-related kind of crisis only I could handle, but she took a deep, ragged breath, and burst into tears.

“Oh, god, no, Salome, I’m so sorry.” I gathered her against my chest, stroking her hair and trying to calm her while she sobbed into the front of my shirt. “I didn’t mean — I’m so sorry, please, forget I said —”

“You’re impossible,” she said, muffled. “Impossible, and — dammit, Julian. Five years.  _Five_.”

She pulled away, swiping at her tears with the back of her hand and hiccuping with every breath.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, willing the sea to swamp the boat and carry me to the bottom, where I would be eaten by carnivorous sea slugs like I deserved. “I’m —

“I thought you didn’t want to marry  _me!_ ” She dragged her hands through her hair as she wailed. Somewhere, I thought drearily, Asra was getting a me-shaped migraine. “You never said a word, Julian, so I didn’t think — and it was all right, we didn’t  _have_  to be married if you didn’t want to, but I didn’t  _know_ , and I couldn’t bear asking and you laughing at me —”

“I would  _never_ ,” I said, fervently. I would  _never_  laugh at her, unless she was laughing too. That was part of love; it could never be cruel. “Salome, my darling, please, let me —” I fumbled the box out of my pocket and started to open it before Salome yelped, still sobbing a little, and clapped it shut again.

“You gangly — !” She hadn’t let go of the box, and tears streamed down her cheeks without stopping. “I would always have said yes, Julian. I love you. Why didn’t you ask me, if you wanted to?”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to ask,” I said, miserably. “I was afraid you didn’t want to marry me, because —”

“Julian.” Salome let go of the box and took my face in her hands, pressed her forehead to mine. “You could have asked me to marry you in front of the Devil and I would have said yes.”

Now I was crying, sobbing and gulping and awash in a hundred different feelings. “Well, I think that time has passed,” I said, wiping my tears away, and then hers. “But there’s a priest, and —”

She tackled me to the deck, kissing me, the box trapped between my chest and hers. “Yes,” she said, laughing and crying, her hair falling all around us. “Julian, if you don’t promise to marry me  _today_ , I will capsize this boat, and neither of us can swim.”

“I promise,” I said, in between kisses. “Just as soon as we get to shore.”  _Such fools we are_ , I thought to myself, while the boat rocked and the tears turned to laughter.  _And fools we’ll be forever._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](http://theherocomplex.tumblr.com) <3


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